


Butchered

by TheBiPenguin



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Crime Fighting, Crime Scenes, Crimes & Criminals, Doctor Stiles Stilinski, London, M/M, Police Officer Derek Hale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-03
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-08 14:16:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 20,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11083317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBiPenguin/pseuds/TheBiPenguin
Summary: Following a tragic family accident, Derek decided he needed a fresh start in a new place. After moving to London and joining the Metropolitan police, he was introduced to Dr Stilinski, a charming young pathologist and has been dancing around the topic of asking him on a proper date for far too long.Inspired by the Rizzoli and Isles series by Tess Gerritsen, this is the story of the case that finally inspired Derek to finally ask Stiles out on their first proper date.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic includes graphic descriptions of human remains and violence (As it is inspired by a crime thriller series, see summary). 
> 
> Also note, this wasn't originally a Sterek fic, it was written with entirely different characters and has been adapted. As a result, it's quite "Sterek-light" and focuses far more on the actual crime-thrill aspect than on their romance. (There will be one Sterek-centric scene at the end though, promise.)

No. No, no, no!

The alarm screeched, intensifying his panic as he charged into the smoke filled room. It stung his eyes and stuck in his throat, making him gag as he waded through the thick grey veil. Still the alarm screeched. With one hand clutching the phone to his chest he stretched upwards and yanked out its’ batteries, killing the noise and threw open the window before putting the phone to his ear again.

“Sorry. Go on.” he sighed, rubbing his sore eyes with his free hand.

“Possible s-suspicious death. Called in at 07.13 by the homeowner. Billing Road-”

“-text me the address. What do you mean _possible_ suspicious death? Is it suspicious or not?”

“Well, uh…suspicious yes. But it’s the d-death bit we’re hung up on. We d-don’t know yet. How s-soon can you get here?”

He shook his head, giving up.

_Idiot._

“Give me half-hour.” He barked, quickly disconnecting before the child of a divisional detective could argue with him. He probably wouldn’t be that long anyway. He was practically ready. Tipping the charred remains of what would have been his breakfast out of the toaster into the bin with a sharp clang, he surveyed his home. He scowled at the yellowing wallpaper he’d not got round to replacing yet. He could see boxes of files and old newspapers piled on the sagging black leather sofa through the open hatch above the sink, which was full of last night’s takeaway cartons and plates.

_It’ll have to wait. Again._

He grabbed his coat and made for the door. In the hall he paused to check himself in the mirror. Trying to satisfy himself with man staring back at him, he smoothed his dark hair with one palm and re-tucked his shirt into his trousers. He straightened his warrant card round his neck and turned it so it was facing the right way, noticing the faded ID photo. It was still him, his own sober expression, just younger…a lot younger actually. Detective Chief Inspector Derek Hale, London Metropolitan Police Major Incident Team. It was the persona he’d turned toward the public and to his fellow police officers almost every day since he joined as a trainee Police Constable, aged just nineteen. He saw himself in that photo as he had been then, full of ambition and energy. It wasn’t anything like how he felt now. He felt lethargic and thoroughly…middle-aged. He huffed and quickly looked away, grabbing his bag and car keys off the coffee table and reaching for the door.

“You off then?”

He spun round as though he’d heard a ghost, but no such horror awaited him. Clothed in an old dressing gown, her long blond hair in a mess, his housemate, the eternally young Erica Reyes was leaning against the door frame to her bedroom.

Everyone always said that them living together was an odd match, Derek being the heavy handed, sensible type. He’d never been involved in the light hearted banter and impulsive behaviour Erica had been known for. But despite popular opinion, they’d made a pretty good team. He’d provided the steadiness and sensible advice Erica had needed to make the move from California to London a success and she kept Derek from being dragged down too far by his work, which he was prone to. He’d been working in the Sex Crimes Unit when they’d first moved here together and he’d gone about the work with a vicious flare that Erica had never quite understood. He’d push himself to near collapse, determined to right each and every wrong he could put a handcuff on, fighting to prove himself in the testosterone fueled career he’d chosen for himself. Erica was his comic relief. She went on spontaneous wild nights in the city with the boys from work and reset his alarm for 3am if he woke her when he came in from work late.

“I thought you were asleep.”

 “Not since you decided to open a crematorium in the kitchen. You bringing bodies home with you now, Boss?”

He smiled. The affectionate nickname had started as a joke about the imbalance in authority between them early on in their friendship, when he’d had to be the voice of discipline in her then disorderly world. He’d always liked it.

“Sorry. Division called. They’ve got a death scene for me.” He gestured towards the front door with his keys.

“So…you’re not gonna make the cinema tonight then?”

_Shit!_

He’d completely forgotten. They’d agreed to go and see some loud, ridiculous sounding film with all the obligatory explosions and cop shoot-outs Derek secretly hated. He couldn’t even remember the name of it. He shook his head, trying to pull his best puppy dog eyes to avoid her wrath.

“No worries. Another night.” She smiled as she disappeared back into the gloom of her bedroom and shut the door, keen to return to sleep.

Derek straightened himself to his full height and cracked the crick in his neck with satisfaction before pulling open the front door and heading out into the already oppressive heat of the July city morning. He ran the steps down from their flat on the fifth floor two at a time, refusing to passively wait in the lift as it crawled through the levels. By the time he reached his car he was sweating and breathing harder than he was happy with. How long had it been since he’d been to the gym? Back in California he’d been a regular, swimming, cycling, whatever took his fancy, but the past ten years with the job keeping him all hours of the day and night he’d certainly let his fitness slide.

 

_London drivers are dick-heads, why did I ever come to this city?_

He swerved to avoid another commuter desperate to get to the office that all important ten seconds sooner. He refused to drive like that. He’d seen enough parents, spouses, children snatched up by deaths greedy claws in traffic accidents to know better. He wouldn’t do that to his sisters. He wouldn’t do it to Erica. He painstakingly maneuvered his way through the packed city, grinding his teeth until the flashing blue lights of squad cars came into view. He pulled up, yanked the keys out of the ignition and stuffed them in his pocket. No need to lock your car when it’s surrounded by police officers. He wiped a bead of sweat off his thick brow before pushing open the car door and stepping onto the pavement.

_Nice area._

He looked up and down the street, admiring the expensive looking cars on brick laid drives in front of sizable, detached homes and uniformly cut lawns. Hardly gang land, but, he knew better than to judge by appearance. He turned towards a crowd outside one of the houses and sighed. Crime scene tape is catnip for local busybodies. He squared his broad shoulders and strode up and through the rubberneckers, flashing her warrant card at the officer guarding the boundary of the crime scene before ducking under the tape and heading up the drive towards the house. He spotted a tall, skinny young man with dark, greasy hair he assumed was the divisional detective standing on the front porch. His shirt was stained with sweat but despite the heat he looked like he was shivering. 

“DCI Hale?” He stammered.

“Yes. That’s me. What do we know?” 

“Homeowners name is J-Jenifer Holton, twenty-nine. She’s a solicitor in the city. She rang three nines this morning just after seven hundred hours.”

“So she’s not the victim?”

“No, sir. When she first came downstairs this morning. It was on her living-room sofa” He gestured towards the house.

“It?” Derek paused as he was pulling on a pair of latex gloves to look at the pale face of his colleague, who responded by shrugging helplessly.

“Male, female, adult, child?” he prompted.

“It’s, err. Well I think that’s one for the pathologist, SIr.”

He frowned at him as he started to put the pieces together. He began to recognise the shell-shocked pallor, the shaking hands, and the tremoring voice. He’d been the same when he saw his first murder, a seventeen year old lad killed in a gang turf dispute. He couldn’t remember the boy’s name, or even his face from the photos. When Derek had seen him as the exhibits officer at his autopsy, bagging and labeling his clothes, phone, fake ID and other evidence, his face wasn’t recognisable. Some thug with a big bat and no brain had seen to that. He’d seen photos in textbooks of course, hardened to thought of death. But to see a human being ruined like that, beaten like meat beneath the tenderizing mallet, had sickened him.

Whatever Jenifer Holtan found on her sofa this morning, it was nasty. Nasty enough to have shaken this young detective to the core. He took a deep breath, probably the last one he’d want to take that morning.

“Better give him a ring then. And call my sergeant, Bill Reed. Tell him I want CCTV the length of this road. I wanna see who’s coming and going. That means buses and taxis too. If there’s no suggestion as to the victims ID then we have to work outward from location. Has this Jenifer girl been taken back to the station for the first account?”

The boy nodded stiffly.

“Good. Let’s get started then. Where’s the CSM”

“Inside, Sir.” He gestured towards the house again. Derek pulled on his second shoe cover and pulled the mask up over her face before ducking under the second line of police tape and into the house.

As the sun disappeared behind him the heat clung to his skin, refusing to be shaken off. Sweating under the claustrophobic suit he surveyed the front hall. It was spacious, with smart wooden flooring and a red carpeted staircase opposite the front door, old-looking. He could see a gleaming dark cooker and black granite worktops through an open door to the left, but the line of silver crime-scene step plates led right, through a set of white sliding doors into another wooden floored room. He hesitated, there was a familiar smell in the air.

There’s no way to describe the smell of death, of rotting flesh. Derek had always found it the most nauseating and repulsive of smells. To him it was the smell of someone you knew, of someone you loved, being served up as dinner for flies, bacteria, worms and worst of all rats. He hated rats with a passion. He steadied himself, wishing he’d taken the time to make more toast, to line his stomach, to settle it before the battle to hold the bubbling mix of digestive juices in check as he faced whatever was the source of that stench. His clammy plastic suit rustled at he lunged from plate to plate, careful not to brush against the spotless white walls of the hall as he headed towards what he assumed must be the lounge. The doorway was filled by a familiar figure. The stout body of Alfred Saunders, a seasoned Crime Scene Manager, turned towards him, his eyes narrowed in a pinched smile, although it was obscured by the face-mask. He was an enthusiastic man, although Derek couldn’t think of anything duller than his job. Each Detective Constable has to take it in turns performing each job role, and he’d hated time spent doing exhibits. Recording, bagging and storing endless crisp packets and cigarette butts which were almost certainly worthless to the investigation, just in case any one obscure item might later turn out to hold the key to the entire case, which it almost never did.

“DCI Hale.” He tried to sound light-hearted, but his usual energy was lacking. Even seasoned professionals aren’t completely immune to the effect of cadaverine “Boy have you caught a fun one today. We’re just dusting the windowsill in there because one of the windows has been left open overnight, then we’ll be happy to get outta that room and towards the front door. Figured you’d want this one done before the pathologist arrives.”

“Yeah. Thanks Alf.” Derek attempted to smiled back through his own mask. “We’re just calling the mortuary services now. Shouldn’t be long. Is anyone else registered to this address?”

“Nope.” He shook his head. “We asked the duty officer in case we needed to exclude their prints and DNA but apparently not. She has a couple of friends who visit and her mum who’ll we’ll need samples from.”

“Okay. I’ll get it done…How bad is it in there?” he ventured. “The smells ripe.”

Alf huffed “Yeah, that’s why we want out of there as soon as possible.” He shook his head “It’s bad, Boss. It’s really bad.”


	2. Chapter 2

Stiles pulled up by the curb with a roar. He grabbed his black messenger bag of the passenger seat, stepped out onto the pavement and slammed the shiny back car door shut quickly to shield the red leather interior from the sun. It wasn’t the most practical choice of car, especially in this heat. But how often does it ever get this hot in Britain? It must’ve been over thirty degrees and he could already feel his spiky black fringe sagging towards his forehead with the accumulation of sweat. It had been a defiant move on his part, buying what he knew was a lad’s car meant for twenty year old petrol heads.

At thirty four he was one of the youngest consultant forensic pathologists in the country. He was slim, not tall exactly but the upper side of average. His dark, brown hair stood out against his pale complexion, emphasized by his strong jaw and high cheek bones. He looked less than his thirty-four years and was adamant that he wouldn’t be old, not yet. His colleagues might make their jokes about his boyishness, plenty of his juniors being nearly ten years his senior, but who cared? He had far too much to do before he got old. And the lad’s car and sharp suits kept certain other questions at bay. No girlfriend in your mid-thirties always raised questions. He didn’t deny anything, he was gay and he just hadn’t found the right man yet. Stiles had focused on his career, as young men are encouraged to do. He loved solving each and every puzzle the world could throw at him.

That’s why he’d specialised in pathology. His parents couldn’t fathom it, all that time in medical school to spend your life working on dead bodies? But it was more than that, this was where Stiles felt he could make a difference, by helping solve the puzzle, by giving people answers. That was what he was here for today. He was determined that whatever he was about to face in that house, he’d make sense of it, the medical aspect of it at least. He slung the bag over his shoulder and squared his jaw before shoving through the growing crowd around the scene to hold up his ID card to the on-duty PC.

“Doctor Stilinski, Home Office pathologist.” He rolled out the formality as he smiled at the officer. There were only a handful of consultants for each region of the city and most uniformed officers knew them by sight. The officer didn’t return the smile but held up the tape politely so Stiles didn’t have to stoop as he headed for the house. He’d never understood the desire to have an overly large house. He preferred quality to quantity. When he’d taken this job he’d bought a modest but well-furnished flat in Kensington. The mortgage was steep, but he was a consultant now. He could afford some luxury. Besides, it was an investment really, he hated paying rent. It felt like pouring money down the drain.

In the doorway to the house he saw a familiar, dark haired man. He didn’t look that much older than him, forties somewhere, but he radiated confidence. He was talking over the crime scene tape on the porch to two non-uniform officers, Stiles couldn’t hear exactly what he was saying but he quietly smiled to himself in the knowledge that his bark was far worse than his bite. Stiles was still getting used to working with Met officers and he still didn’t know what to expect from most of them, but he’d warmed to DCI Hale considerable over their time working together. The older man turned to him as he approached and the non-uniforms turned with him, halting Stiles in his tracks as though their gazes were somehow pushing him backwards down the drive.

“The boy wonder finally arrives” he said blankly. One of the uniformed sniggered, mistaking Derek’s jest for genuine mockery and Stiles had to fight the urge to snarl his words at them.

“I believe you asked me to come in?” He challenged.

Derek nodded briskly. “I’m just allocating first actions for my team. Get kitted up and I’ll walk you through the scene”

Stiles nodded back and took out his forensic suit. As he pulled the suit over his clothes Derek continued issuing orders to his DCs.

“I want him found. Now, right now.”

“Arrest him?”

“No. Not yet. Just bring him in and get anything he has to say on tape. Do we have CCTV of this road yet?”

“Yes, Sir. But not of the buses yet, we’re still talking to TFL.”

“Right well make collecting and viewing that a high priority action too. And I want ANPR of vehicles registered to any persons of interest including his car as well as hers, Jenifer’s. I wanna know where those cars have been for the last forty-eight hours and I want full forensic recovery of both vehicles.”

“Hers too, Sir?”

“Yes, hers too. For all we know she’s done this herself and is trying to pin in it on the ex-boyfriend out of spite. Open minds. This is a weird one and I don’t want us making any assumptions. Understood?”

The DCs nodded and hurried away down the drive, leaving Derek to finally return his attention to the now fully suited Dr Stilinski. He smiled briefly before turning back towards the house and Stiles obediently followed him inside, carefully moving from stepping plate to plate.

The smell inside the house was unmistakable. Although he couldn’t see Derek’s face, the sound of rushing air against his face mask told Stiles that he’d started breathing through his mouth only. He didn’t blame him, Stiles was more used to the smell than even the most senior police officers. He dealt with it every day, slicing open abdomens, cracking ribs and examining organs. That was his bread and butter.

As they moved through into the lounge he caught sight of the source of the smell. At the other end of the room was a tightly upholstered, beige leather sofa facing a large TV on the opposing wall. At least, most of the fabric was still beige. The seats had been stained a black and red mix by congealing blood. Stiles cast his eyes from one end to the other, his eyes taking in the assortment laid out before him. He saw lungs, a heart, intestines and liver all in a row, but no body, just organs, cooking in the morning sun.

Derek moved to one side so Stiles could approach the remains. He stooped over the seats and batted flies as they hummed around his head, trying to look as closely as he could without touching the victim, or what was left of him…or her.

God this wasn’t going to be easy.

“What you thinking doc?” Derek’s voice cut through the heavy quiet, all business in the face of horror. Stiles straightened and turned to face him, where he remained by the door to the hall, almost ready to bolt.

“No way of telling time of death medically. No muscles means no rigor, no skin means no livor--“

“--and organs out of the body cool at different rates to a whole body” Derek shook his head in disappointment.

“Exactly. Do you know roughly what time?”

“Homeowner said she didn’t go to bed until nearly two AM, she was up working late. Came down at seven this morning and saw it sitting there.”

“That fits. We can get an entomologist to have a look at these.” Stiles gestured a gloved finger at the flies “But when the body was dumped and when they died might be significantly different.”

He leaned back over the organs. “Whoever took these out knew what they were doing. It’s very neat.”

“A doctor?”

“Not necessarily. A butcher maybe, someone with more than basic anatomy knowledge and who knew how to use a blade. Cause of death isn’t going to be easy either, not with just this.” He turned his head side to side to better see the surfaces of each organ, looking for bruising, lacerations, anything that might suggest how their owner had died. He looked at the intestines, the longest of the internal organs.

These were especially long, too long, in fact.

He straightened and turned to face Derek, pulling his mask down so he could see his face, his handsome features now sporting a triumphant smile. Derek, for his part, looked perplexed.

“I’ll call transport and get them to take the pieces in individually. I’ll take DNA for profiling as soon as they arrive, but I’ll need to get a second opinion before I can start examining them.”

“You want a paediatric pathologist?” Derek gaped, horrified even further. “I thought they were too big to be--”

“They are.” Stiles almost laughed “Way too big. They’ve also got too many stomachs. I need to consult a forensic Vet.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Vet? You mean they’re not human?” Derek looked past him back to the sofa. The stench and the humming of flies remained but the substance of what had really disturbed him only moments before had evaporated.

“I can’t confirm that.” Stiles cautioned “I’m saying that the digestive tract isn’t human.” He crouched so his head was level with the sofa cushions. Derek had ventured forward, no longer repulsed by what he was seeing, and Stiles could hear his labored breathing as he stooped to see from his angle.

“The liver’s not right, either.” He decided “The lobes aren’t the right size or shape. It’s got the right four lobes the same as a human, but the caudate’s huge” he pointed to the over-sized lobe sagging between the gap between the cushions “While the right lobes tiny in comparison.”

“Anatomical variation?”

“Unlikely.” He stood, shifting his weight, trying to keep the feeling in his feet. He turned so they were facing each other again, each perched on their little silver square island as though they were playing some perverse game of hopscotch.

The look on Derek’s face was pure relief.

“Looks like we’re arresting the boyfriend after all.” He scoffed. “I mean, who does that?”

Stiles shrugged.

“I’ll leave that to the psychiatrists.” He tried to sound jovial, but suspected he’d failed.

They headed for the door, both keen to escape the melting pot of decay that was Jenifer Holton’s home. Stiles briefly wondered whether she’d move house after this. She’d certainly need to replace the sofa. It was an utterly inane thought and he scolded himself for it almost immediately.

_Poor woman. She must be traumatized. To find the man you’d known so well, maybe even loved, was capable of doing something like that…I suppose you can never really know what’s going on in someone else’s head._

It wasn’t until they were back outside of the crime scene tape, stripping off their forensic jumpsuits, relieved to feel the coolness of the meager breeze on their baked skin, that Derek spoke again.

“God, I love you sometimes, Doc.”

Stiles blushed. “Made your day easier?”

Derek laughed. One of those rare, private moments Stiles caught Derek’s underlings casting envious glances at as the sound of their boss’ hearty chuckle reached them.

“You have no idea. I thought this was gonna be a full murder inquiry. Didn’t think I was gonna see my bed again for a month.”

“Well.” Stiles ran his long fingers through his spiked fringe in an attempt to undo the damage done to it by the forensic suit. “You can buy me a drink again sometime on one of these nights off you’ll be enjoying.”

He winked mischievously at a beaming Derek, his gaze lingering on his parted lips just long enough for him to notice before turning his back and enjoying the feeling of Derek’s eyes on him as he walked away.

 

 

 

Derek threw open the door and strode into the briefing room. His second coffee in hand, he swung into his chair at the head of the long table and looked around at his team.

“Are we all here? Anything or anyone I’m missing? Bill?” He turned to his sergeant, who shook his head.

A lanky man in his early fifties with a receding hair line and faded black suit, Bill Reed looked more like a school teacher than a police officer. He was a quiet, controlled man who liked to have all his ducks lined up at all times. He and Derek had this in common. It made them a good team leadership combination, able to coordinate the huge number of action allocations and procedures involved in a murder investigation. There was no such chaos today. The afternoon was fading, and the heat was retiring into a warm, comfortable evening.

“Right. Okay.” Derek clapped his hands, calling them all to attention. “Crime scene clean up team are already in Jenifer Holton’s house. The meat’s in the mortuary, awaiting DNA results from the lab to tell us exactly what it is. Three to four days they’re telling me.”

“What are we telling the press?” someone chimed in, he didn’t see who. The press officer was never an easy job. Trying to reassure the public without misleading anyone or compromising the investigation or the family’s privacy was a nightmare tightrope to have to walk.

“Nothing other than that remains which we **_believe_** to be animal in origin were recovered from a home in Southwalk this morning and that we have already made an arrest.”

Derek didn’t want to tell them anything else ahead of the lab results.

“Do we have CCTV?” He turned to Bill.

“Yes boss. We’ve got a visual of the boyfriend’s car on her road at just gone a half past midnight, with him in it—we think. It needs enhancing, that’ll be done first thing tomorrow. He’s downstairs now with his solicitor.” He laughed. “You should’ve seen the look on his face when we picked him up.”

A general chuckle went round the room.

“We said Murder Investigation Team and he shit himself. Confessed right there on the doorstep. Told us he bought the lot down in Tooting Market, it’s on his route to work from his parents flat in Wimbledon where he’s been living since she, Jenifer, chucked him out ten days ago.”

Derek felt a smile pulling across his cheeks. He was going to make that film with Erica after all. “You find the butcher?”

“Yeah. Nice fella actually. There’s no CCTV inside the market but he said he remembers a guy matching the boyfriend’s description buying a load of offal and leftover bits which sound like what we found on Jenifer’s sofa. He’s coming in tomorrow to give a signed statement and attempt a visual ID.”

“Nice. What about forensics on the cars?”

“Her's is clean. Well figuratively.” One of the DCs, a young blond man with biceps the size of his head called out. “Bloody mess. Papers, food wrappings the lot. But CSIs found no blood or any other biologicals. His though, well that was more interesting. We’ve got traces of blood on the backseat of his car, not much but enough to test for a match with what we found on the sofa. I just need your signature to authorize that, Sir.”

Derek nodded. “Good. Right, Bill, I’ve just got off the phone to the CPS solicitor. As soon as he’s got that confession together I want a read of it. Then we’re gonna charge him. And I’m gonna call a forensic psychiatrist in at some point tomorrow to get an assessment of his mental state. Police surgeon seemed unconcerned, said he was fit to be detained and be interviewed but you know what these defense pricks can be like. I don’t want him getting off on emotional breakdown, I want someone in there as soon as possible who can testify that he knew damn well what he was doing.”

He cast his eyes around the room. “Anymore for anymore? Right then, finish up today's actions and I’ll see you all bright and early tomorrow morning. Well done everyone.”


	4. Chapter 4

Stiles pulled into his space in the mortuary car park and shut off the engine. The sweltering heat of the earlier half of the week had disappeared, as is its nature here in sunny England, but he was quietly glad. He preferred to be cool, to feel crisp and fresh and alert. He smoothed his hair against the side of his head before climbing the steps to the front entrance. He was the first one in today, as he was most days.

_Too many early nights Dr Stilinski. You need to get out more._

He struggled with the key before he could push the front doors open. As he walked through the reception and towards his office at the back of the building he admired the various floral and scenic artworks hanging on the walls. He’d always thought it was odd having such cheerful décor in a mortuary. It almost felt as though you were trying to deny what was here, to paste over the grief with cream paint and potted flowers.

He found his own office a sterile oasis among this sickly environment. It was plain, a light wooden desk with a comfortable leather backed chair and a computer. It was well lit, with a large window looking out onto the car park. Not exactly the high life, but comfortable.

He started up the computer and left it to warm up while he went to get his morning coffee from the staff room. He was extremely particular about his coffee, he knew that he should have breakfast really but even the thought of solid food that early made him sluggish. Black, piping hot and no sugar.

The bitterness kicking the back of his throat made his eyes wide as he re-entered the office and drew his chair up so he was facing his screen. He checked new arrivals, it had been a quiet night. One referral from Guy’s Hospital Accident and Emergency. Female 52, dead on arrival with suspected ruptured oesophageal varices which needed post-mortem confirmation. He could ask one of the training registrars to do that one, it’d be simple enough and count towards their portfolio. He flicked from the arrivals screen to emails, sifting through junk and meeting memos until he found the one he wanted.

Laboratory Test Results. Case reference Number: 077582400. Cross species DNA profile. Requested July 4th 2015 by Dr M Stilinski.

He opened the message and flicked through what he already knew. Four samples, one from each the intestines, liver, lungs and heart.

Sample one.

  * Tissue type: intestinal epithelium.
  * Species: Ovis aries



_Sheep. No surprises there._

Sample two, lung tissue, Ovis aries.

Three, hepatic tissue, Ovis aries.

Four, cardiac muscle…

He froze, staring at the screen. Forensic pathology was a field that was always going to keep throwing up surprises. It was one of the aspects of the work he enjoyed, the constant challenge of never knowing what you were going to find. But this…

He pulled himself back to the present and reached for the phone.

 

 

Derek had always loved the sound of Stiles’ voice. He spoke in that classic upper-middle class English accent Americans are unfailingly enamored with. Speaking with him on the phone from in the privacy of his office gave Derek a rare chance to just close his eyes and listen to him, images of Stiles’ lips and tongue forming those beautiful sounds filling his mind, without interruption.

This was not one of those moments.

“Can you hang on a sec, Doc?” Derek put the phone on hold and leaped out of his chair into the teams open plan office. “Bill.” The older man looked up from his computer screen and gave Derek a puzzled look. He gestured Bill into his office and he obediently followed, conscious now of the attention they’d gathered from their team as he closed the door behind him.

“What’s up?”

“Dr Stilinski’s on the phone.” He could feel his brows furrowing without his permission.  “Did you speak to that butcher the boyfriend got his meat off of?”

“Sam Tullis? Yeah. But what’s that got to do with the doc?”

“He’s just had the results back from the lab. They’re sheep…” He took a deep breath. “All except the heart. That’s human.”

Bills face was a mirror of Derek’s own expression just moments before.

“I know…shit!”

“What d’you wanna do, Boss?” His blank face had regained itself and was now furrowing into a concerned frown to match Derek's own.

Derek took a moment to think about it, bracing himself for the huge task he saw forming in front of him.

“I need to call the chief constable, he’ll want to hear about this. I want you to get a pace warrant, arrest Sam Tullis on suspicion of disposing of a body and preventing a lawful burial. We can re-arrest him for murder once we’ve had CSIs in his house, his car and in that butchers shop. I want every piece of meat in that shop in the mortuary and I want to know who his suppliers are.”

Bill headed for the door, his gangly limbs carrying him with new urgency “Yes, Sir.”

Derek took another deep breath before picking up the phone again “You still there doc?”

“Yes.”

“Can you get over to that butchers in Tooting Market for me, ASAP. We’re gonna bring in all the meat from that place for testing. God knows where the rest of this poor bugger is by now. Can you send off another sample of that heart for me, full DNA profile this time?”

“Will do.”

“Right, I’ll meet up with you in Tooting as soon as I’ve briefed the big bosses” He hung up, grabbed his jacket of the back of the chair and headed for the door.


	5. Chapter 5

Tooting high street was crowded at the best of times. One straight road leading right through the borough, a road Stiles’ Jag was crawling along. He drummed impatiently on the steering wheel, radio blaring despite having turned the air conditioning off to avoid breathing in exhaust fumes. That was ten minutes ago and already he could feel his shirt beginning to stick to the back of the leather seat.

Eventually, he saw the epicentre of the chaos. Over half a dozen squad cars were parked in the bus lane in front of a band of crime scene tape across an open entryway leading off the main street into a dingy labyrinth, through which he could see hanging clothes rails packed together opposite stalls of Asian food he didn’t recognise. The name “Tooting Market” was painted in crude white letters above the entrance.

He pulled out into the bus lane and lazily covered the last one hundred yards at what looked like rocket speed compared to the main traffic, earning him an enthusiastic “Wanker!” from a sweaty, overweight man in a white van. Resisting the urge to retaliate, Stiles grabbed his bag from the passenger seat and hauled himself out of the cars heat onto the pavement into the meagre breeze. He took a relieved breath, the smell of spices filling his nostrils. He wasn’t sure what it was and he’d never had a very high tolerance to spicy foods, but it smelled delicious.

The human traffic on the pavement was worse than on the road as people shoved and dodged to get through the growing crowd around the market. Stiles held up his ID card as he manoeuvred his way through towards the on duty PC manning the cordon, a different one to the last scene, older and more authoritative-looking.

Various members of the crowd turned towards this new development with eager eyes. A dark, middle-aged man with a large beard shouted something in a language he didn’t speak a little too close to his ear and he winced, suddenly spooked by the tense atmosphere and close proximity of the bystanders.

He held up his card as he ducked under the tape and into the shadow of the marketplace. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom he saw rows of stalls lining a wide concrete walkway. He made his way along past mobile phone stores, tables laid out with traditional Asian clothing towards an illuminated white stall at the far end of the walkway.

As he approached the noise of the crowd receded and new voices came into focus. They were calmer and distinctly more Caucasian compared to the diverse range of accents and dialects he’d experienced out on the high street. They were almost boring sounding by comparison. He was barely listening to what any of them were saying, just police officers asking their million and one routine questions as they do at any crime scene. The responses were angrier, owners and staff of the stalls out of pocket as a result of the disruption.

As Stiles reached the end of the walkway, he saw crime scene investigators in their white jumpsuits on the other side of the inner cordon, around the brightly lit butchers shop, loading meat off the counter and into containers as their colleagues recorded everything on tightly gripped clipboards. Stiles slowed to a halt.

None of the meat looked in any way unusual, just what you’d expect to find in a local butchers. Some glared with the bright freshness of muscle fibres, others glistened the dark shiny shade of refrigerated organs. But each piece was the same taunt, each hiding the unthinkable possibility they had discovered, refusing to give up its secrets.   


Peel back sentiment and love and we’re all meat under the skin.

“Doctor Stilinski?” A lanky man in a fraying grey suit materialised beside him. “I’m Bill Reed, Detective Sergeant” He extended a sweaty hand with long fingers and chewed nails that Stiles shook a little reluctantly, smiling as well as he could. “Get a bit of a battering on your way in?” He cast his eyes back up towards the outer cordon.

“Bit of a hostile audience we’ve got today Sergeant.”

“Yeah, I’ll say. No real trouble yet though. You wanna suit up and head in, Boss is already in there?”

“DCI Hale?” Stiles slipped covers over his shoes before pulling his suit up over his narrow hips, fumbling for the zip.

“Yeah. No deputy SIO in yet until we know how many victims we’re looking at.” Reed turned as a flushed young woman with a blond bob and black trouser-suit hurried up to him.

“Press office called” She breathed heavily, leaning her hands on her waist.

“Tell ‘em to keep their gobs shut!” Snapped Reed, wide eyed “We’ve already told ‘em Chief Con wants nothing said officially ‘til we get DNA back on this lot.” He jerked his head towards the CSI team while the blonde woman nodded rapidly “He’s gonna write a statement himself for the six o’clock news, that’ll have to be enough. Where are we up to?”

The blond woman straightened up, sparing Stiles a nervous glance, reminiscent of a school girl who just caught her crush looking at her. “ANPR’s ordered, only one car registered a Ford Focus that’s not parked on the high-street or at their home address. Uniform forced entry ‘cause there was no answer, Jim Ford’s SIO over there. He’s saying—“

“Wait, Detective Superintendent Ford?” Reed frowned

“Yes. He’s the only one available apparently. Everyone else is up to their eyes so he’s been pulled off a 7-day review on that stabbing over in Whitechapel, just temporarily. He says the house looks lived in, there’s fresh milk in the fridge, but that the bedroom wardrobes have all been emptied out. No toothbrushes in the bathroom either.”

“He’s legged it. Circulate him as wanted on PNC. I’ll ring the boss and let him know” The blonde nodded briskly before hurrying away.

“Playing cat and mouse?” Stiles smiled as he pulled his hood up over the front of his ears and tucked in his dark spikes. Reed rolled his eyes as he waited with his phone to his ear. “Boss. It’s Bill. Tullis’ not at his home address, looks like he’s done a runner and taken the Mrs with him…Yeah. Already underway. How are you getting on in there?”

He spun to face Stiles with unexpected speed, making him jump “Yeah he’s just arrived.” Reed held out the phone.

“Hello.”

“Doc.” The volume of Derek’s fiery voice made him hold the phone a few inches further from his ear, a movement that made Reed give him a knowing smile. The old sergeant was more familiar than other with the harsh growl that was DCI when he was on the hunt. “Suit up. We’re at the back in the meat locker. CSM wants you to look at these whole-body hanging bits before we take ‘em off the hooks in case you can identify anything.”

“Alright. How much meat are we looking at?”

“Over two-hundred separate cuts so far, most of them no bigger than your forearm. Loads cut from the same carcass no doubt but let’s not take any chances. We’ve had to hire a refrigerated truck, I wanna move it all in one go. I’ll see you in here in a sec. Can you put Bill back on?”

“Ok.” Stiles handed the phone back and pulled his mask up over his face, savouring the last breath of uncontaminated air before lifting the police tap over his head and carefully walking up through the staff entrance behind the counter and towards the storage space.


	6. Chapter 6

Derek pulled up his chair next to Detective Super Ford’s at the head of the table, calling his team to attention. The pale, fluorescent glow of the office lights hurt his eyes and she squinted as the reflection of his own tiredness in the faces round the table.

“It’s become apparent, following a search of the Tullis house that Samuel Tullis has absconded with his wife, Sophie. We’ve circulated them both as wanted on PNC. We’re ordering ANPR checks on their cars and the Chief Constable did an appeal with their photos on the six o’clock news this evening.”

“That was a brave move.” Ford shook his balding head. “How long until the press guess that a bunch of organs on the Monday and search of a butchers on the Thursday are linked?”

The team groaned in unison.

“No idea.” Derek shrugged “But at this point we don’t know what we’re dealing with. Could be one victim, but we could just as easily have a serial killer on our hands. We need to protect the public safety by getting them both in custody as soon as humanly possible.”

“Sir.” One of the DCs, a heavy-set, red-headed man called Brian raised his hand “What are we thinking about the wife?”

“Initial CCTV of them driving away from their home on Tuesday night suggests she’s complicit, but who knows. I’ve got hostage negotiators on standby just in case and we’re talking to both their families first thing tomorrow so hopefully, if they cooperate we’ll get a better picture from that.”

“If they cooperate.” Ford echoed doubtfully. “The boy wonder manage to find anything interesting?”

“Dr Stilinski” Derek pronounced all three syllables of Stiles’ name pointedly, casting a rueful look around the table “Said that none of the carcasses are human. Neither are a good number of the organs. The rest will have to wait for DNA, not enough anatomical difference to tell. We can’t fast-track that many samples so we’re prioritising organs ahead of joints etc because they’d be hardest to recognise as human visually and so easiest to sell as offal.”

“Boss you don’t think…” Brian tapped his pen against his lips.

Derek nodded slowly. “Chief Con said in his announcement that he advised anyone who’d bought meat in that butchers not to eat it. He even asked them to bring it in.”

Ford scoffed but Derek ignored it.

“But I’m afraid that yes, it is a very real possibility that people have already eaten at least some of the rest of our victim.”

The room suddenly felt airless, filled with an appalled silence he was eager to break.

“I’ve flagged up to the serial crime unit that we may need their expertise and I’ve ordered a psychiatric profile based on what we’ve got so far plus medical records for tomorrows brief. Was there anything obvious in those records by the way?”

“Wife’s taking a few hormone medications, the names don’t mean anything to me. I’m waiting for her GP to get back to me. All prescribed to treat polycystic ovaries. His is pretty empty. No hospital admissions, last GP visit was over a year ago for an ear infection”

“So no psychiatric admissions?” Derek raised his eyebrows “What a surprise. Make sure we’re asking about any mental health issues when we speak to their families so we know for when we make the arrest.”

Derek rubbed his eyes, smelling the rubbery scent of vinyl gloves on his fingers, a souvenir from his days work. He let his hands fall from his face and turned to look at the clock, ten fifty-three pm. He pushed the image of Erica on the sofa in front of the TV from his mind and refocused on the room

“Ok. Tomorrow you’re all gonna have new actions allocated.”

He counted on her fingers for emphasis “Interviewing the families, try and get DNA off of them. Neither Sam or Sophie have got criminal records so we need samples for familial comparison if we want to link them to any crime scene forensically before we arrest, it’ll make interviewing them that bit easier and eat into our pace-time less. Carrying on with house to house on the streets surrounding their home, prioritising those between there and the market. We’ve got their colleagues coming in to give official statements so I want the same people who spoke to them today to do that. Not much in the way of friends, but telecoms are running of a list of names from their phones and High Tech Unit are going through their computers so we’ll need to look through that too. Dr Stilinski said he was gonna examine the heart we’ve got this evening so once we’ve seen him at briefing we can start trawling through missing persons. Anything I’ve missed?”

He looked from face to face, all shaking wirily.

“Right. Well done everyone. I’ll see you bright and early eight o’clock tomorrow.”

The team flipped folders shut and grated their chairs against the floor as they stood.

“Remember” Ford yelled above the noise “Chief Con hasn’t said anything about human victims related to today’s search. Breath it anywhere outside this building and I’ll cut your warrant card in half myself.”

He caught Derek’s wrist as he passed him. “How long do you think before the review team come in?” he whispered.

“With a Detective Super in all the briefings?” Derek blew out a long, stale tasting breath. “A fortnight, if we’re lucky. Depends on what these lab results say.”

Ford nodded, lifting his coat of the back of his chair and pulling it onto his wide frame.

“See you in the morning, Jim.” Derek waved over his shoulder as he headed for the door.

 

 

Stiles flung the door to his flat closed with a bang and walked straight to the kitchen. The large windows let in the orange light from the street below giving his minimalist home an ethereal appearance. His shoes echoed noisily on the wooden floor as he crossed the room.

He ditched his jacket and bag on the countertop and pulled his shoes off with a sigh of relief before switching the lights on and pouring himself a neat whiskey, double-as was now his habit. Carrying his laptop under his arm and the bottle in the same hand, he took a gulp the drink as he wandered into the lounge, enjoying the warm burn as it sank down his throat and warmed his stomach.

Firing up his laptop, he unbuttoned his shirt. As the screen slowly lit up he stretched arms towards the ceiling, sore from stooping all day over sample after sample as the CSIs had brought them out of the meat locker. He poured himself a second whiskey as the websites he wanted loaded.

Online dating felt like a last ditch effort, but it was the only way Stiles could think of to meet other single gay men, Derek apparently not being interested enough to really make a move. It didn’t help that Stiles didn’t really have any friends in London yet, despite having been here nearly six months. He’d met a few people at the local gym who were pleasant enough, but no one he felt comfortable enough to ask to explore the “gay scene” with him yet.

He poured himself another drink while he browsed the day’s activity. He scrolled through the various requests for nude photos and faceless profiles, stopping briefly at anyone he thought might be half way to being pleasant. 

Eventually he reached the bottom of the page empty handed and laid back against the sofa cushions, feeling the floor shift under his feet as the alcohol soaked through his empty stomach into his blood.

Fighting the sinking urge to sleep he pushed himself up into an unsteady standing position and trudged back into the kitchen, his legs heavy. Too tired to cook, he shoved two bread into the toaster and slammed the handle down clumsily. He ate it dry, barely chewing before hitting the light switch again and falling into bed.


	7. Chapter 7

Stiles had expected a forensic clinical psychiatrist to be a sleek, upper-middle class man with thick square glasses and crisp dark suit. As he sat across from Dr Hannah Towley, he couldn’t help but stare in mild disbelieve.

Well into her fifties, Dr Towley looked more like an aging hippy than a distinguished clinician, with wild ginger curls and large spectacles with bright red frames. She wore no suit but instead a strange, rustic looking poncho over a poorly matched white, floral dress.

As the various members of DCI Hale’s team took their seats around the table in the briefing room he caught more than a few of them casting amused glanced between the two doctors. Stiles wondered if her outlandish appearance would help make him look like more of an authority figure by contrast.

Towley seemed blissfully unaware of the attention they were receiving and was overenthusiastically greeting each and every team member as they approached the table, the charms on her bracelet rattling noisily as she waved across the room at the poorly rested detectives who barely nodded their response.

Stiles sat quietly, watching as the room filled with people he recognised as forensic scientists, the CSMs from the two crime scenes he’d been to and eventually Derek. He came hurrying into the room, wielding his action and policy books in one hand. His dark hair was uncharacteristically scruffy, standing up in odd places which Stiles suspected had been pressed against his office sofa during the night. He was flanked by an even sallower looking Reed on one side and a stouter, shorter man Stiles didn’t recognise on the other. The three took their seats and Derek brought the rest of the room to attention.

“Right. Everybody here?”

“Where’s Racheal?” One of the DCs called out

“Already with the Tullis’ families.” Derek replied. “Ok so this morning you’ve all got actions to be getting on with. But before we get started we’re going to hear from Drs Towley and Stilinski about our offender and victim profiles.”

Derek gestured to the hippy, who sat forward eagerly.

“Well” she beamed “This is a very interesting case. Mr Tullis doesn’t fit any classic psychological profile perfectly but I think we can get a pretty good idea of what he’s mind-set is like from what we know. He’s got no history of mental illness and at 38 he’s probably too old for the first onset of schizophrenia which usually strikes in adolescence so I’m comfortable saying that he’s not psychotic. His M.O is consistent with this. His planning of disposing the body and evading arrest aren’t suggestive of psychotic illness. The lack of previous criminal behaviour also suggests he’s not suffering with Antisocial Personality Disorder”

“So not a psychopath?” Derek looked surprised, it wasn’t an expression that Stiles was familiar with and he found his eyes lingering on it without his permission.

“The calculated execution of his plans suggests he may have some of the emotional deficits associated with psychopathy but…” she shrugged, throwing up her garishly coloured fingernail. “Mrs Tullis is also very interesting. It’s difficult to say whether she’s a willing accomplice or a victim of her husband’s coercion or emotional manipulation. I’d have to speak with her at length before I’d know for certain”

Stiles rolled his eyes almost involuntarily. He remembered his rotations on psychiatric units in medical school, how the consultants had thrown diagnoses around based on symptoms alone, with few laboratory investigations availale. No scan will detect depression. No blood test can diagnose anxiety. As time went on these diagnoses changed from mild depression with anxiety to bipolar disorder and continued to change as symptoms evolved and medications battled for control over symptoms.

Stiles hated the uncertainty created by the fluidity of the human mind. Bodies were solid, dependable. You could weigh and measure and photograph them. You could slice pieces off and lay their secrets bare beneath the microscope. They didn’t change, everything was simply as it was. It was how he liked it. His controlled posture and neutral expression were a stark contrast to the woman sitting opposite him.

“I think what we’d all like to know” The stout man next to Derek interrupted his thoughts abruptly. “Is what you think he’ll do now? They’re both British born with no family outside of London, we’ve cancelled their passports and they must know that we’re looking for their car. Where’ve they gone?”

Towley sucked her teeth for a moment, considering. “You’d go somewhere you were confident you wouldn’t be found while you calculated your next move. A B’n’B? Somewhere inexpensive because you’ll need to pay cash and you don’t know how long you’ll be there. It’ll be rural, I think. Somewhere there aren’t many people who might recognise them and not a large police presence. Any little villages in the green belt are worth checking.”

“That’s too broad.” Derek turned to the stout man, who nodded his agreement. “We have to wait for him to use his bank cards or show up on ANPR. That car’s got to turn up somewhere eventually, whether it’s with him in it or dumped somewhere. In the meantime we’ve got no triangulation on their phones, both are switched off. CCTV shows them heading north towards the centre of the city but that’s it. We can’t do a hundred mile CCTV trail, he could be anywhere by now. I’ve asked Traffic to notify us of any burnt out cars they pick up too in case he tries to get rid of it that way.”

He turned to Stiles. “Tell us about the heart”

He started, surprised by Derek’s sudden change in subject. “It’s big.” He swallowed. “Not pathological hypertrophy, like you see in people with high blood pressure, just quite large. No congenital pathologies which we could match to medical records I’m afraid and it’s undamaged so no clues towards cause of death. Removal looked semi-professional but hardly perfect, consistent with the offender being a butcher. Most interestingly, the coronary arteries had very little atherosclerosis, so whoever it belonged to was a healthy, young adult. The DNA profile’s back. It’s male but there are no matches in the database so we’re looking at taking samples from the families of missing persons. Based on the size and lack of pathology I’d prioritise athletic or very tall men between the ages of sixteen and forty.”

A pleased murmur went round the room.

“Nice one Doc.” Piped up the blond Stiles had seen at the crime scene the day before. In the air conditioned room she looked much prettier than before, with pale pink lipstick and peach blouse. She was the only one in the room who looked like she might have had a reasonable amount of sleep.

“Brilliant.” Derek smiled “Brian can you contact the Missing From Home office and get us a list of people matching that description and start rounding up their next of kin for DNA samples please?”

“Sure thing boss. You want them prioritised geographically?” Derek nodded, looking pleased at his DCs astuteness.

“The heart tissue didn’t show any signs of cell lysis you’d expect with freezing.” Stiles continued. “Even a refrigerated meat locker wouldn’t prevent decomposition indefinitely and the heart didn’t show even the slightest signs of decay. I’d say it was refrigerated almost immediately after death and that he didn’t die more than two days before we found it, which means if he’s not very socially connected then he might not have been reported missing yet.”

“I’ll make sure they keep us updated.” Brian added, scribbling into his day-book.

“Anything else Doc?” Stiles shook his head “Ok then. Just a bit of housekeeping, this is the last day we’ve got Detective Super Ford before he goes back to his review. He’s processed the Tullis house and it’s not looking like anything significant is there for us. No suggestion the house is a crime scene of any kind but obviously we’re keeping it under surveillance just to be on the safe side. The shop is now fully processed, with PDF samples taken from all the staff and it’s not looking like a death scene either. So, where did he die? And is it necessarily the same place as where he was dismembered?”

“Kinda depends on who he is doesn’t it?” Reed pulled a pained expression. “If they know each other professionally it could be in a workplace of some kind. Or if he’s been stalking him it could’ve been somewhere in public, a park at night or something.”

“Dismemberment?!” Stiles raised his eyebrows. “It’d be a seriously brave move. There’d be a lot of blood, even after the heart had stopped, he’d be covered.”

“I agree.” Derek nodded. “I’m thinking he might’ve died at home that’s why we’ve not found the rest of him.”

“Kinda strange not to have reported half a rotting corpse in your neighbour’s house.” Ford countered. “But you’re right. We need to know who he is.”

“Well we’ll find out. Right.” Derek stood up and the room began to buzz as people began moving “Let’s get on with it ladies and gents. Get your gear and go. And make sure you sign the sheet when you get the car keys off the hook! I don’t need any more paper pushers crawling up my arse over pathetic shit like that, thank you.”

His bluntness made Stiles smile. They had that in common, he realised, that direct attitude. His was less coarse he supposed, more articulate and intimidating in a more intellectual way. He waited while the rest of the team filed out the single door, checking his messages.

He had a voicemail from his secretary “Dr Stilinski, it’s Margery. You’re needed at Liverpool Street Station, suspected suicide on the tracks. I said you’d could call the SIO as soon as possible. The numbers 07792…” He quickly scrawled the number across the back of his hand before disconnecting.

“Duty calling?” He looked up to see Derek’s sharp eyes watching him from the doorway.

He laughed half-heartedly “Yeah. At least I know my jobs safe. They say two things in life are certain eh?” He followed the older man out of the room and drew up alongside him as they made their way down the staircase towards the stations main reception.

“Nice work on that heart by the way. We’d have been trailing through missing persons for years.”

He blushed “Thank him, whoever he is. He gives me all the answers. I only read them.”

Derek stopped outside a plain wooden door on the first floor

“Well ring me if anything in that butchers is worth reading.” He winked with a flash of his teeth and vanished through the door, which swung shut behind him with a bang that resonated up and down the stairs.

Stiles shook his head, smiling despite the lack of sleep and headed out into the sunshine of the car park. Only once he reached out to open his car door did he see the ink on the back of his hand and remember. Liverpool Street. Another puzzle to put together. He pulled his phone back out of his trouser pocket and started dialling.


	8. Chapter 8

Stiles threw his gaze up and down the menu for the hundredth time. He should’ve focused more in school language lessons, why do they write menus in Italian anyway?

He looked over the card and smiled nervously at the broad built blond sitting opposite him. Keen to preserve the maximum level of dignity he pointed as he attempted to pronounce a random choice in the middle of the page so he wouldn’t have to repeat himself. The waiter gave him his best lord-give-me-patience smile at his mispronunciation and scribbled his choice on his tiny white notepad.

As he hurried away Stiles took another large mouthful of wine before turning his attention back to his date. Charmer_guy32 really was a little bit of a stretch to say the least. He was handsome in a worn-out sort of way, with unkempt stubble and short scruffy blond hair and sharp blue eyes. He looked at least half a decade Stiles’ senior and all the more hardened for it, with a confident stance and rough tone Stiles found slightly unnerving.

“You said you moved to London recently.” Stiles moved swiftly on from his failed attempt at linguistics. “What brings you to the city?”

His heavy-set date shifted his weight on the cushion of his seat. “My parents live here now. Used to live up in Hampshire but my mum wanted to be closer to her mum as she’s getting older.”

“And you moved with them? You must be close.”

Stiles thought of his own parents, barely a presence even in his earliest memories. Always rushing off to conferences and ski trips and a thousand other commitments, leaving him with the live-in nanny.

His mother was a commercial financial advisor, travelling all over the globe to advise big companies on how to slim down their expenditure and maximize efficiency. His father was another doctor, not a pathologist an oncological surgeon, clinical lead of his own department in a busy city hospital.

Part of what made them such a fantastic match was their ability to waltz in and out of each other’s lives as their careers dictated without ever seeming to grow distance or insecure. Stiles had resented it at times but it’d been fun really, his nanny was a motherly Irish woman he’d known all his life. He still rang her occasionally, although he’d forgotten to do so recently with work occupying so much of his mind. He silently vowed that he’d make time to check she was well and hear the latest updates on her grandchildren.

“Quite close.” Charmerguy nodded. “But to be honest, it’s a practicality thing as much as anything else. I’m posted abroad most of the year so there’s no point me buying my own place until things change and I can transfer back home—Which I will, eventually.”

“You said you were in the military?”

“Yeah. Have been these last twelve years, medical unit would you believe it.”

He flashed Stiles a toothy grin, composed as much crooked plaque as enamel. “I’ll transfer to a barracks here and go into training the next generation after another few years or so. Wanna settle down, have a couple of kids. You’re a doctor right?”

The would-be charmer swung the conversation around before Stiles had a chance to react to that last statement.

“Yeah. I’m in forensic medicine.”

He watched as the charmers eyes widened, they always did.

“Wow. That must be…intense.”

“Not as intense as being shot at day and night, I’m sure.”

Stiles tried to laugh, desperate to keep the conversation light-hearted. Dead bodies and foreign wars weren’t great first date topics, but his didn’t seem to mind and kept his sun-blasted features drawn out in a broad smile.

“So, a couple of kids. You throw that out there on all your first dates?”

“Only the ones with potential.” He winked and Stiles forced himself to laugh, which came out harder than it really warranted

The curt, young waiter reappeared and put a plate of risotto with baby tomatoes, mushrooms and something that Stiles was pretty sure was goats cheese in front of him. It looked delicious. He waited for his date to be served before beginning, suddenly aware that he’d not eaten since breakfast, eager to finish work as early as possible so he’d have time to shower off the smell of the mortuary before dinner.

He looked over at his date, who was matching Stiles’ enthusiasm. He hadn’t been thrilled at the choice restaurant, but he was seriously rethinking his opinion. For all his shortcomings, this guy knew good food.

Stiles tried to control himself, not wanting to look like a slob. He put his fork down for a moment and took another sip of his wine. For a moment he just tried to enjoy the evening, looking round the warmly lit room at the varnished, dark wooden furniture, the cliché romantic white candles.

He’d barely had time to explore London since he’d moved here and this was by far the most pleasant spot in the city he’d seen so far. One good thing to come out of this online dating so far, he thought to himself, eager to make the most of this rare evening out. This wasn’t his night on call and for once he had plans, semi-nice plans. For just one evening, he silently vowed not to overthink anything. Not to be the ever serious Dr Stilinski and just enjoy a warm summer night in the city.

 

 

“Brilliant.” Derek pinned the phone against his shoulder as he scribbled the details onto a scrap of paper on his desk.

 “Okay, thanks for that. I’ll ring you back.” He clumsily replaced the phone on the receiver, already feeling the adrenaline pumping through his body as he entered to open office.

“Gather round ladies and gents.” He waved everyone in. “I’ve just had a call from Essex traffic police. They’ve got Tullis’ car. Parked up just a few blocks away from Epping station. I’ve told them to sit on it for twenty-four hours in case they come back, but I doubt it. If not, we’re gonna bring it in for full forensic recovery tomorrow.”

He turned to Bill, whose drawn face was lit up in a relieved, lopsided smile. “They’re sending us CCTV of the street it’s parked on so we’ll know exactly how long it’s been there, as well as look at what state the wife’s in.”

“Boss.” Racheal caught his attention, peering up over her computer. “Isn’t Epping on the end of the central line? D’you think they might be catching the tube back in towards the city? Vanish into the crowd and all that while we’re searching the countryside?”

“It’s possible.” He agreed. “I’ll ring Essex back and get them to get us CCTV from Epping Station while they’re at it.”

Derek turned his attention back to Bill. “How are we getting on with these Missing From Homes?”

“There were twenty-two men between sixteen and forty reported missing in the last fortnight who we thought matched the description of either tall or athletic and healthy. We’ve got familial samples for all twenty-two and we’ve already sent them off. We’ve got…” he looked at his computer screen “Fifty-seven less likely that we’ll start rounding up if this doesn’t give us what we want.” 

“Nice.” Derek nodded, grateful once again that he could leave such time consuming tasks to his capable sergeant

 

 

Stiles grabbed his bag off the dining table and pulled on his shoes in the hall. He paused in front of the mirror to rub wax into his hair, donning his usual sharp spikes, before stepping out into the morning traffic. He hated driving in rush hour. His instant reaction was to dodge and dive through the onslaught of vehicles weaving each and every way through the city. He missed his motorbike at times like this. He’d kept it all through his years as a junior doctor, refusing to let go of his last souvenir from medical school, but, in the heart of the city he’d had to admit that it was an excessively dangerous pleasure. He’d already seen a far greater number of motorcyclists on the autopsy table in his short time here than he’d been used to encountering when he was in training.

He’d traded the bike in and bought his Jag which was his new baby. He’d loved it the moment he’d seen it, another extravagance born of a refusal to admit he was already into his thirties. But it lacked the manoeuvrability of a bike and Stiles was still trying to adjust to the new bulk. The advantage of the car however, was that it came with air conditioning and radio and without sweaty black leathers and a claustrophobic helmet.

When Stiles pulled into his space in the mortuary car park he still felt a little nauseous from the last evening’s wine, which he’d indulged in a little too enthusiastically, but mercifully clean and crisp under his smart exterior. He made a stronger than usual cup of coffee before settling into his chair and starting up his computer. The register said that there were two post-mortems scheduled for the day, neither marked urgent and neither had been in the mortuary more than a day. He took a loud slurp from his mug as he read through the preliminary notes.

A sharp knock on the open door made him jerk upright, his eyes spinning in their sockets as the room tilted momentarily. When everything resumed its proper position in space he finally saw the on-call registrar in her black scrubs.

As the clinical lead it would be inappropriate for Stiles to say he had favourites among his staff. However, Lisa Cook was adored by all who knew her as far as he could tell, and he was no exception.

Unendingly kind, Lisa was Stiles’ first choice to handle the most delicate identification and farewell viewings. She was the embodiment of feminine gentility, her auburn locks hugging plump cheeks lifted in a warm smile. While other pathologists may live up to the stereotype of being cold and disconnected from their patients, Lisa shone out from her peers as she flipped between neutral clinical investigation and sensitive explanations delivered to grieving relatives.

Stiles’ weak attempt at a pleasant smile, which he suspected looked more like he was having a minor stroke, went undetected, her tired eyelids fluttering as she approached his desk.

“Morning.” She exhaled heavily “You ready for handover?”

“Yeah.” Stiles stretched towards the ceiling in a vain attempt to drag his mind into its usual sharp awareness. “Just run me through it then get yourself home to bed. I’ll brief the others when they get here. Looks like you’ve had a quiet night.”

“Not bad.” She agreed, flipping open a chart of notes from the nightshift “We’ve had four collected by the undertakers yesterday evening. Like you said it was quiet so all the papers are already signed and in here for you. Two admitted. One sixty-three year old male found at home by his daughter, his time of death was estimated at 48-72 hours before he arrived at eleven past midnight. The other was a 47 year old man brought over from Guy’s Accident and Emergency department following a confirmed heart attack.”

She clocked Stiles’ frown and added. “ECG was conclusive according to the Emergency consultant but the family want it checking by post-mortem. By all accounts he was a fitness fanatic so they’re reluctant to accept the diagnosis.”

“Sounds like a waste of tax-payers money to me, but ok. At least it shouldn’t take very long.” He conceded “Anything else I should know?” Lisa shook her head, swirling her hair around her like a Hawaiian skirt. “Ok. Go get your head down and I’ll see you tonight.”

“Cheers.” She snapped the folder shut eagerly and laid it down on the desk “You don’t look like you’ve had such a peaceful night yourself. Night out?”

“Something like that.” He forced a laugh, not wanting his conversational dodge to offend her. She continued her unfaltering smile and left quietly, no doubt keen to get home before her kids left for school.

The rest of the team arrived shortly after Lisa left. Gathering them together, Stiles gave the rundown of the morning’s handover to his various consultants, registrars and mortuary technicians then set them to work for the day and returning to his office. He reopened the notes on the first post-mortem he’d planned to do himself that day and was about to hit print when the phone on his desk jumped into life. It’s shrill tone made his heart skip momentarily as he snatched it off the receiver.

“Dr Stilinski.”

“Morning, Dr. I’ve got DCI Hale on line one for you.”

“Thanks. Put him through.” Stiles put the phone back down and reluctantly closed the report on his screen. John Tyler would have to wait until the afternoon. An SIO didn’t ring in person in the midst of an active investigation unless they wanted you for something important.

Stiles already had his hand on the phone when it resumed its’ screech and had it to his ear before the noise had time to make them ring.

“Dr Stilinski.”

“Morning Doc.” Derek’s voice vibrated down the line with excitement “We’ve got an ID on your boy. Dylan Watkins. We’re in his flat, not even twenty minutes’ drive from the Tullis house. And we’ve found something I think you need to see.”

“Great. What’s the address?”


	9. Chapter 9

The block of flats Dylan Watkins lived in, or had lived in, was nicer than Stiles had expected. On the main high-street opposite a smart looking pub garden, it looked more like a central London penthouse.

As he returned the glares of the pubs iron-clad gargoyles Stiles wondered what dark treasures lay in store for him in what had been Dylan’s home. The less wealthy get the short end of the stick with most of the lifestyle diseases which plague the western world, but some things never change and murder doesn’t discriminate. He flashed his ID card at the cordon officer, who nodded respectfully, and started climbing the stairs towards the fifth floor. Posh flats or not, the lift was still out of order.

The combination of dry summer heat and exertion left him panting when he finally reached the third floor. He paused to catch his breath and admired the view through the glass front of the building as it stretched outwards out towards the suburbs. From this vantage point he was momentarily breath taken by the sight. It looked as though someone built a city inside a forest and didn’t quite have the heart to cut the trees down first, so built the buildings to fit in around them. His own flat had an equally pleasant but entirely different view on a clear day, but he still longed for the sight of greenery when he woke each morning.

He sighed, remembering how he woken earlier that day and chiding himself for his actions. Getting drunk to make a date easier to endure wasn’t the classiest move he’d ever made. It should have been nice, to connect to a person who’s connection wasn’t just to cling to you out of grief, seeking solace in your clinically attuned empathy.

Charmerguy should have felt like an equal, to whom he’d had no obligation, but, he didn’t. Surely there were hundreds of men and women across the globe right now thinking the same things about their previous night’s failed conquests who were equally doomed to disappointment, but an uncontrollable part of Stiles was pleading with some unknown deity that he wasn’t going to be one of them forever.

He wanted desperately to believe it, more desperately than he wanted to admit. His eyes burned and the clear late morning sky blurred as he wiped them on his sleeve. He couldn’t justify his own emotions to himself, couldn’t explain it, but just for a moment he wanted that imaginary connection to someone more than he thought he’d ever wanted anything in his life, more than he had wanted his place in medical school, more than his own first flat, the sporty car, his dream job.

A lifetime of clawing his way towards the life he wanted to lead and here he was, thinking he’d trade it all for someone to keep him warm at night. It was madness, he momentarily wondered if he could still be drunk but quickly dismissed it. He’d drunk plenty but it had been with a lot of food and they’d started at seven o’clock. No way could he claim it was affecting his thinking now, which was lucky as he hadn’t really been expecting to get called out mid-week on his week of day-call. But he still felt it, the unmistakable intoxication which had almost lead him astray the night before.

“You suiting up doc?” Derek’s brisk tone cut through his thoughts and pulled him back into the present. Dylan Watkins deserved their best effort, just like every other patient, and his emotions weren’t about to compromise his care. It was the only care anyone could give to him now, to figure out what happened. To get him justice. Justice was one of the four pillars of medical ethics and Stiles had purposefully chosen a specialty which held justice at its centre.

“Ready for me?” His tone was almost teasing in his attempt to compartmentalise his anxiety. Derek smirked.

“Yeah. Forensics are almost out. You took your time?”

“Traffic’s a bitch today.” Stiles’ pulled zip up the front of his white suit and tucked his spiked fringe under his hood. “And I don’t get a siren.”

“Welcome to London, pretty boy. Traffic’s always a bitch here.”

Derek led him down the corridor with office style green carpets and beige walls. The wooden doors to the flats were all identical with brass door numbers and little black spy holes.

“Dylan Watkins, if it’s him, is twenty-two. He was reported missing by his mother Mary along with his nineteen year old sister Laura two days ago, she’s been living with her brother for just over eight months. Mum hadn’t been able to get hold of either of them for three days and hadn’t seen them in nine days, she and her husband were in Cornwall. We matched the description you gave us of our boy with his Missing From Home file and took DNA from their mum which came back as a familial match this morning. Nice work by the way, I thought we were gonna have to test half the city.”

“What do you mean if it’s him? I mean, I know we can’t have tested the heart’s DNA against the rest of him yet, but, you must be pretty sure.”

Derek didn’t respond as they reached the door to number seventy-two. It was propped open by the first stepping plate. There was an area about a metre wide outlined on the floor in black pen, covering the threshold separating the hall carpet and the flats wooden floor.

“This is where we think he died. In the doorway, there’s not loads of it but this is one of only two large areas of trace blood. Smears led right through here into the bathroom over there where we think Laura died.”

Stiles followed him as he strode from plate to plate across the modest flat. In the living area Stiles saw white leather sofas and a large flat screen TV in front of the windows. The bathroom was all white tiles, floor included. The bathtub was wider and deeper than most modern models.

“They’re both dead?” Stiles had only just discovered there was a sister at all.

“Laura’s clothes were found here and there wasn’t any blood on them, so I’m thinking he answered the door to Tullis while she was in the shower. That would explain why neither of them fought back. Dylan was stabbed or shot or whatever as soon as the door opened then dragged inside so it could be closed again. Laura didn’t hear because she was in the shower so he got her by surprise as well.”

Derek shook his head ruefully, avoiding Stiles’ gaze.

“I’m not seeing any bodies.” he sighed, drawing his own conclusions. “And I don’t smell any bodies. Freezer?”

Derek nodded solemnly.

“Fridge-freezer. Original, right? Blood pattern suggests he cut them up in the tub and carried the pieces to the freezer in their bags”

He led Stiles back out of the bathroom and into a kitchen strewn with discarded cutlery and a few days’ editions of The Metro. It was the first mess they’d had seen anywhere in the flat, somehow the fact that it looked more lived in than the other rooms made it all the more terrible.

A tall, white fridge-freezer loomed in the corner over the black counters. Derek stood on a plate to one side and beckoned Stiles forward. He complied without hesitation despite his reluctance.

“You’re okay to open it, CSIs have printed and swabbed it already I just didn’t want them to thaw before you were ready.”

Stiles wrapped his gloved fingers around the cool metal handle and with a firm tug the freezer door swung open to reveal a colourless face on its side staring out through a thin plastic carrier bag.

Dylan’s eyes were glassy-blue and ice clung his mousy brown hair and short stubble. His muscular neck was speckled with frozen blood and rather than splaying out into the broad shoulders of a young athlete it ended just below his Adam’s apple at a jagged stump. Behind the head, Ed could see the freezer was stacked with other identical carrier bags, their contents largely obscured by condensation.

“Lovely isn’t it?” Stiles cast his eyes across at Derek’s deep browed scowl. “Like a scene right out of American Psycho.”

“I’ve not seen it.” Derek admitted, he wondered how Stiles could add horror movies into a life where he had to deal with so much horror already.

Stiles swung the door shut again and pulled open the fridge below. He couldn’t see through any of the plastic bags and the shelves were noticeably less full.

“It’s going to be another long day.” He groaned. Closing the second door, he straightened up and turned to Derek to where he’d been hovering over his shoulder, arms tightly crossed across his broad chest.

“How tall were they?”

“He was six-one. She was five-seven.” He’d clearly pre-empted the question. “Is it--”

“No.” His turn. “I’ll have to examine all the pieces to confirm it but I don’t think this all of two people of that height. There’s just not enough.”

“Fantastic.” Derek rolled his eyes towards the ceiling. “Is there anything else you need?”

“Nothing else I can do yet. I’ll call Mortuary Transport and follow them back to the lab. You want me to wait for you or just start examining as soon as they’re in.”

“Nah, get started, I’ll trust you. Just ring me when you start and finish okay? I’ll try and get in for some of it but I’ve gotta feeling I’m gonna be up to my eyes for the rest of today.”

 He turned and they filed out of the flat and back into the hall.

“Rest of the week more like.” Stiles pulled his hood down, yanked the mask of his face and began straightening his spikes. “I take it you want me in your briefing tomorrow morning to sum it all up if you’re thinking that you’re not going to be there for all of it?”

Derek stomped out of his suit and screwed it up before throwing it in the nearby disposal caddy.

“Yes, please.” He pulled out his phone from his trouser pocket and began punching in numbers “Better call the big boss and let him know that we need to update the public health office.”

Stiles threw his forensic suit into the caddy and headed for the stairs, away from the fluorescent glow hall lighting and back towards natural sunlight. “Oh and Stiles.” He turned with one foot either side of the door to the stairwell, between the normal, oblivious world and the dark surrealism of Dylan and Laura Watkin’s murder scene. “Seven day digital loop means we’ve got no CCTV of this building before we found Dylan’s heart on Jenifer’s sofa so any cast-iron evidence you can throw up from this lot would be much appreciated.” He winked and Stiles smiled despite himself.

“Sure thing, boss. Leave it with me.” He let the door slam behind him as he headed down the stairs and back out into the sun.

 

 

“You promised him evidence?” Lisa sounded incredulous as she held each amputated piece of Dylan Watkins up to its’ adjacent partner and examined the edges. Stiles sat on his stool overlooking his two registrars as they worked over four tables. One for frozen and one for refrigerated parts of each victim.

“No…” He retorted “Well, maybe. I got carried away. It doesn’t matter. You don’t stab to death and butcher two people on your first offence and not leave any evidence. No one’s that clever or that lucky. Now, tell me what you see.”

“Well, all the edges match up so there’s no one else here. They’re all him and her. Looks like a large serrated blade. Very possibly the same blade for both victims and the same blade that was used to kill them. He has a three stab wounds in his anterior chest, so the blade has a point on it. All three show one serrated edge and one blunt.”

“I’ve got the same blade pattern here. She’s got only one major wound. It’s an incision across her right anterior neck triangle, it’s just differentiable from the amputation wound. She’s had extensive evisceration, looks like the incision was transversely across the abdomen rather than from sternum to pubis.”

“Snap again.”

“So one offender, most likely. Or at least only one person doing the cutting. And an amateur at that. Any defensive wounds?”

“None.”

“She has marks on her face, knees and elbows that look like she may have hit the edges of the bath on her way down. They’ve bruised so her heart was beating when she fell. But no, no defensive wounds”

Stiles nodded “So they either didn’t see their attacker coming, not likely in his case but more likely in hers, or they saw him but weren’t expecting to be attacked. What’s their causes of death?”

“Hers has to be exsanguination. Her right external and internal jugular veins are completely severed. The blades gone through the Sternocleidomastoid and there’s laceration of the right common carotid artery as well.”

“That one’s easy. Lisa?”

“Well he’s got a puncture wound to both lungs and the left puncture has lacerated his descending aorta. So it’s either exsanguination again or haemothorax.”

“Think about it. You’ve got two collapsed lungs which are filling with blood, or you’ve got internal bleeding. Which one kills you first?”

Stiles tried not to sound patronising but he’d never fully stepped into his role in teaching younger doctors. It just wasn’t his style and he knew that he had a tendency to come across as condescending.

“It’s the haemothorax. That’s why there’s no defensives because the lungs will have collapsed almost immediately. He didn’t have the breath to fight back.”

“Exactly. You two are getting good, very good. Can you both record where we found which pieces and what’s missing, document the wounds, weigh in the organs we have and assess their damage. I’ll be back in ten minutes after I’ve called DCI Hale to let him know what we’ve got so far.”


	10. Chapter 10

“I don’t get it.” Derek looked from face to face around the briefing room, hoping one of them would cry eureka and spell it out for him. “Forensics are telling me we’ve got no evidence to suggest body parts were ever in their car and most of Dylan and Laura were left in the flat nearly three days until we came knocking about the heart. Why?”

His tired eyes settled on Stiles, but even the boy-wonder could only shrug.

“We’re missing a kidney, lungs and liver from Dylan and only lungs from Laura. Heads, hands and feet you can’t disguise as animal, but, there was a lot left in the flat which could have just as easily been disposed of in the butchers. So why leave them when you’ve got a perfectly good car which could fit two bodies in?.”

“Worried about being seen making too many trips up and down the flats?”  

“He’d just walked in, stabbed and dismembered them.” Derek reminded them. “I don’t think he’s feeling shy at this stage.”

“Maybe he started disposing of them, then thought better of it. If they could guess we’d treat their disappearance as suspicious and eventually investigate, they’d know that even without bodies we’d still find blood—Thank you CSI—and would figure out what had happened.”

“Not impossible…” Derek chewed on the end of his pen. A siren faintly echoed through the room in the silence as a patrol car pulled out of the garage below the MIT office. Stiles gazed ahead at the detective with the blonde bob opposite him, at the grooves in her brow as she frowned with concentration.

“Why use a serrated knife?” She suddenly looked up at him, the whole room joining her in an instant.

“I—uh. Well, why not? It had a point on it so it would still be perfectly good for stabbing with. Plus it would act like a bread knife, more purchase on whatever you’re cutting would have made dismemberment faster. Or it could just have been a choice of convenience, he happened to have that blade in his possession when he decided to go and kill them.”

“But a butcher wouldn’t.” Derek was waving his pen at the young detective emphatically now as he caught on.

“Exactly. Because it makes a mess of the meat. They use non-serrated knives.”

“Yes. Now we’re getting somewhere. Doesn’t use his car and doesn’t use one of his own knives. That says clever to me, as though he’s trying to prevent creating any forensic link between him and the crime scene. But then why try and sell the meat in your own shop? Why not just fill the fridge-freezer and leave it there?”

“Because it’s not him.” Stiles barely whispered it, but everybody heard and all heads spun to him again.

“What?” Derek looked incredulous. “He sold their organs in his shop, knowingly by all accounts because he legged it as soon as we came knocking. You said it yourself whoever dismembered that body knew their joints, knew enough about butchery to know how to do that.”

“But used the wrong type of knife.” Stiles sat up straighter in his chair, energized by this new train of thought. “If you were used to using non-serrated blades, why not buy another non-serrated blade which didn’t already belong to you if didn’t want it traced to you? Every time we keep thinking about him, but it’s not him. It’s they, Sam and Sophie. They sold it, they’re co-owners. They ran away.”

“CCTV did look as though she was complicit.” Brian agreed

“She’d have seen enough butchery to figure out roughly how to do it, plus she’d have keys to the meat locker.” Stiles continued

“Can she drive, the Mrs?” Derek looked to Reed

“Nope. No license, cars his. That’s why she left so much behind, she couldn’t carry any more and had intended to keep revisiting and taking more except we showed up.”

“Okay. Hold fast.” Derek held up his hands “We’ve made a lot of assumptions here. If this is all her, why the hell is Sam helping her run away? He didn’t offer her his car to help shift the bodies.”

“Maybe he didn’t know, beforehand that is.”

“So she kills them. Stocks the butchers. Gets caught out when we show up…” He gazed at the clock as though he was waiting for his minds own cogs to clunk into gear “…So she has to tell him…and for some reason he’s okay with her having done this and helps her run for it. Why? Why kill Dylan and Laura in the first place?”

No one answered. “We’ll save that one for when we interviews them. At least we’ve got a damn good guess which one of them actually committed the murder, it’s starting to sound as though Sam is assisting an offender, but, I still want him arrested on suspicion of murder just in case. Essex are telling me that they’re catching up with them. All their bank and travel cards have been cancelled so they’re stranded. They’re faces are on the local news every night now so it’s only a matter of time before someone sees them and rings in. In the meantime, I want Dylan and Laura’s lives turned inside out. We need to find a link between them and the Tullis’.  You don’t knock on a random flats front door and do something like that, this is personal. But, how? Racheal, get on at telecoms, landline, mobiles and his work phone. Laura was a lifeguard over at the local leisure centre I doubt she has a work phone but Dylan was in finance up in the city so I’m thinking he will.  Who’s Family Liaison Officer?”

Brain raised his hand in resignation, liaison officer was arguably the most draining role a DC had to play. To act as the go between for a grieving family and the SIO, trying to wade through the pain and shock to gently draw out any relevant information, as well as dealing with the unavoidable emotional backlash involved in a lengthy investigation “Go talk to his parents, get a list of people they spent time with, places they go often and start visiting. Uniform are continuing house to house on the roads around Tooting High-street. Bill, I’d like you to join them, make sure they’re asking all the right questions. I want a definite link between offender and victim before we arrest if possible. This was cold-hearted, not a crime of passion, so I doubt we’re gonna get a confession and sob story out of her. Him…maybe but let’s not count on it. Thinking caps on, I’ll see you all for de-brief at seven tonight.”

The room gave a pre-emptively tired sigh as folders flipped closed and chairs scooted backwards.

 

 

Days on-call could be either fantastic or truly awful. Being called out during the day meant that you’re routine work could end up stretching into the middle of the night, whereas at least if you get called in the middle of the night you might get a few hours’ sleep before and after.

On the other hand, if you weren’t called out you’re day ended by five o’clock and you had the night off. This was one of the good days. After the briefing, Stiles had been able to add toxicology results to the reports from the week before and submit them to the coroner, perform his only post-mortem of the day—A straightforward case of pneumonia in an elderly man—and was heading out into the mortuary car park with a spring in his step.

His energy lasted him the entire drive home, still buzzing as he stripped off his sweaty work clothes and changed into comfortable tracksuit bottoms and a loose T shirt. It wasn’t until he was sat on the sofa reaching for the TV remote that he felt it. The quiet. All around him the city was bustling on, a million voices all chirping together in chorus while he sat in his own little corner of this concrete jungle, alone.

Hastily, he snatched the remote up off the floor, relishing the sudden noise that filled the room as the screen burst into life, shattering the heavy silence.


	11. Chapter 11

“Boss, we’ve got ‘em!” the divisional detective chirped. It sounded like the same young detective who called her out to Jenifer Holton’s offal prank, which felt like a lifetime ago. Derek jerked upright in bed, earning him a sharp crick in his neck. Unable to see in the darkness of his bedroom, he focused every wave his barely conscious brain could muster on the voice at the other end of the phone.

“Tell me more.”

“Essex rang. They got a report from a Joan Wellsby, she runs a B’n’B over in Epping. She told them that she’d had two guests staying there, paying cash, who hadn’t given their names when they signed in. She saw their photos on the news and called the incident room. Half an hour later, we’ve got ‘em. Night crews driving them down to Scotland Yard now so they can get them into bed for their eight hour kip and have them ready for interview by ten tomorrow.”

“Brilliant. Good lad. I’ll call chief constable and let him know and I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Goodnight, Boss.”

“Is now.” Derek hung up, his eyes adjusting to the gloom. He felt his way out of the bedroom and into the kitchen before putting any lights on, trying not to wake Erica two nights in a row, despite his excitement. After a quick cup of tea to boost his brain, he made the phone call and updated him before heading back towards bed.

 

“Great news for you ladies and gents.” Derek felt as though he may have had the freshest face on the team, although actual appearances may disagree.

“We’ve arrested Sam and Sophie Tullis last night over in Essex and they’re downstairs waiting to be interviewed. I want you in two teams, Brian and Racheal take Sophie in room one, Tom and Steve take Sam in room two. I’ve written out your interview strategies for you already, here you go.”

He half-passed, half-flung the folders down the table towards his concerned looking detectives.

“Give ‘em a read, make any adjustments to them you need. We’re starting at ten, let start spinning them round and see how long it takes them to fall over. Where are we up to on everything else, Bill?”

“We’ve got a witness from the house to house. Joanne Thomas, she walks past Dylan’s flat every day taking her son to the tube station to go to school. She told us she saw a woman matching Sophie’s description coming out of Dylan’s flat at about seven thirty on the 13th carrying a large black rucksack which looked to be full of something heavy. She said she was struggling to carry it. She’s coming in today to make and official statement and identification. I’d like Gill to handle it.”

“Sure.” Derek nodded. “What about telecoms?”

“Not in yet.” Reed sighed “I’ll chase them up as soon as we’re done here.”

“So still no motive.” Derek rolled his eyes “Okay. Forensically we’ve got her. But no jury between here and the moon is going to accept that she did this without a damn good reason. So what’ve we got? How does a butcher’s wife in Tooting Market know a financial advisor working up in Bank? And why would she want him dead?”

“Jealousy.” Brian offered “Maybe they ran into each other locally and was a dick and she bore a grudge. Did he ever buy from their shop?”

“Not as far as we can tell.” Ford countered.            

“Plenty of dickhead blokes out there who think they’re a cut above because they’ve got cash.” Derek reminded them. “Besides, everyone who knew Dylan spoke about him in glowing terms. Charity bike rides, hosting his friend’s birthdays, letting his sister stay rent free. He sounds like a real Mr Nice Guy. I don’t see him looking down his nose at the locals.”

“Maybe she did. Laura.”

“It’s still a pretty pathetic thing to kill them for.” Reed frowned. “I mean, I know lots of murders happen over pathetic things but that’s really weak.”

Derek nodded. “I agree. There’s not a huge amount of overlap between Dylan and Laura’s lives apart from the fact they lived together and that he was a member at the gym Laura worked at, Sam and Sophie Tullis were both members there too but that’s hardly surprising there aren’t many in the area. Maybe only one of them was the target and the other was collateral damage?”

“Still doesn’t tell us which one. Or why.”

“No.” He conceded “Right. Let’s get on with it. Quick brew then I want these actions up and running. Let’s get these two talking.”

 

It had been wishful thinking and he’d known it. Derek stared miserably at the two sets of screens, each showing the same thing. London’s answer to Bonny and Clide drawling “No comment. No comment. No comment.” at each and every damn question they were asked.

With the evidence stacked against them, their solicitors had no doubt advised them that short of confessing and hoping for a reduced sentence for cooperation, refusing to comment was their best bet. Can’t slip up if you’re not speaking.

He scowled at them in turn, willing them to get as angry as he felt and start ranting, crying, anything! Eventually his frustration waned and he slumped back in his chair, resting his eyes and letting his ears keep up with the nothingness that was happening in the room below them. He didn’t reopen them until the sharp click of the Monitoring Room door cut through the monotone. He turned his head to see Stiles cautiously making his way towards him, minding the many wires that lay out across the carpet.

“What’s up Doc?” he squeaked in her best bugs bunny impression. “Didn’t expect to see you today. Are you joining us for the show?” He gestured at the screens with a lazy wave of his arm.

“Not much happening?” Stiles pulled up a chair and sat beside him to see the monitor

“Jack-shit.” Derek flung his head back, focusing on an odd brown stain on the white tiled ceiling, scratching at his dark stubble.

“I’ve got Dylan and Laura’s blood results back from the lab.” His voice was quiet, sorrowful almost. Derek sat himself up properly and looked sideways to face him. For a moment he thought Stiles’ eyes looked watery in the gloom of the room but then it was gone, as quickly as it had appeared, if it had ever been there. He turned too, his face barely a two feet from Derek’s own.

“She has an elevated amount of beta-hCG in her blood.”

“Was she sick? Her medical records didn’t show any doctor’s appointments recently.”

Stiles shook his head sombrely.

“It means she was pregnant. Eight to ten weeks.”

He took a deep breath and exhaled heavily, leaving a thick silence filling the room when he was finished, broken only by the buzz of the monitors and distant voices from the screens.

“…is it his?” Derek nodded at the screen where Sam’s bearded face stared out at them, dark eyes set ahead in steely determination.

“No way of telling medically, Laura’s uterus was one of the parts that got frozen. Cell lysis plus damage to the DNA makes testing pointless at this stage.”

“That’s okay. Telecoms are coming back today they’ll tell us if they were shagging or not. Most likely they met at the pool Laura worked at, somehow Sophie found out.”

“Polycystic ovaries.”

“What?” Derek frowned at him, his own train of thought lost.

“She has polycystic ovaries, Sophie You told me in the first briefing after they went missing. She was diagnosed as infertile after they couldn’t conceive 18 months into their marriage.”

“So the marriage hits the rocks.”

“He has an affair with Laura.”

“Gets her pregnant.”

“…But then it’s the wife that kills her. How did she find out?”

Stiles shifted his weight in his chair to get a better view of the monitor.

“Give me a sec.” Derek rocked forward out of his chair and out the door, leaving Stiles sitting in silence with a few of the DCs staring at the screens. A few moments later there was a knock.

“Interview suspended by DCI Hale at eleven fifty-two.” Racheal vanished of the screen. Sophie shifted uncomfortably in her seat, now the sole focus of the screen. A few minutes later, Racheal and Brian reappeared and took their seats opposite their interviewee just as Derek came striding through the Monitoring Room door and back round the desk into his chair.

When Racheal spoke, her voice was soft, barely a whisper over the speakers and full of sympathy.

“Sophie. Were you aware that Laura was pregnant when she died?”

There was a long silence. Sophie was barely moving, suddenly frozen in place.

“…Sophie?”

Stiles saw the younger woman’s face falter as she tried to stare down her interrogator.

Derek gave a satisfied humph beside him.

“Would it surprise you if I told you that our telecoms officer has informed me that Laura and Sam, your husband Sam, have been sharing a lot of text messages lately?”

Sophie shot a panicked look sideways off the screen to where Stiles guessed her solicitor was sitting

“We believe they’d been having an affair since about fourteen weeks ago, do you remember me telling you that Laura works at the same leisure centre you and Sam go to, Tooting Leisure?”

Racheal closed the folder in her lap and gently laid it on the table beside her. She leaned forward in challenge and Sophie visibly flinched away.

“Here’s what we think happened. We think that after you and Sam got married you wanted to start a family, but you were unable to get pregnant, so you went to the doctors. He told you that you’ve got polycystic ovaries and that you couldn’t have children and that’s where everything started going downhill.”

Racheal’s face was stone as she waited for a response but the only sound that came forth was a soft sobbing, its wavering pitch interspersed with static over the intercom.

“So we think that Sam got involved with Laura because you and he were having problems and, by accident or on purpose, he got her pregnant.”

Sophie was shaking her head vigorously now, tears and dark hair flying.

“So I think that you went round to her flat and you killed her and Dylan and cut them up into pieces. Then I think you carried as much of their bodies as you could back to the butchers and hid it in with the meat and stuffed the rest of them in the freezer. The only thing we don’t know, Sophie.”

Sophie’s tear streamed face snapped up from the floor to face her again, defeat gleaming through her wet eyes.

“Is how you knew that Laura and Sam were having an affair? How did you find out?”

The sobbing got louder, punctuated by ragged breaths.

“He started being…happy!” She spat the word out, like poison in her mouth. “We’d been miserable ever since the doctors told us…” She wiped her eyes on her sleeve with a loud sniff.

“Go on.” Racheal’s voice was soft again now. Beside her, Brian continued to dutifully scribble his notes in tense silence.

“I knew something wasn’t right…so I read his texts. I don’t know why, I never had before. I wanted to be sure…He told her he was pleased she was pregnant!”

She gritted her teeth at the memory, the agony of it carved into her contorted expression. “He said he’d leave me and raise their child with her. Leave me!” She jabbed her finger into her own chest aggressively. “I loved him! I thought he loved me! We stood in front of everyone we knew and swore that we’d love each other forever!” She was wailing by this point, her voice rattling out of the speakers and hurting their ears. “But once he found out I couldn’t give him children, he was going to just throw me away!” She waved her arms emphatically but Racheal to her credit didn’t retreat an inch, just leant closer, her voice ever more gentle.

“That must have been very hard for you to find out.”

Sophie huffed loudly, a bitter smirk playing on her pale lips.

“What happened?”

“I thought…” She wiped her nose on her sleeve again and Brian proffered her a box of tissues, which she accepted, hesitantly. “I thought if I got her out of the way, I could keep him. He was mine! She had no right!”

“And Dylan?”

Sophie’s face went blank, her pain replaced by a numb pallor which Derek thought might just be regret “I didn’t know he’d be there. When he opened the door and saw the knife…I didn’t have a choice.”

Racheal nodded “Okay Sophie. What’s going to happen now is that you’re going to have some time alone with your solicitor while I speak to my boss and we’re going to be calling the Crown Prosecution Service to seek authority to charge you with two accounts of murder. Is there anything you’d like to ask me?”

“What about Sam?”

“We’re not going to be charging him with murder. But we are going to seek authority to charge him with assisting an offender for helping you to run away. Interview ended twelve-nineteen.” Racheal scooped her folder off the desk and vanished from the screen.

Derek leant forward and muted to monitor.

“So no confession and sob story, eh Boss?” Reed winked across the desk at him.

“Hey. I get it wrong sometimes, so shoot me.” He shrugged. “I hadn’t counted on the pregnancy-infertility clause. Cheers for that Doc.”

He clapped Stiles on the shoulder with one heavy hand as he stood and headed for the phone. “Anyway, who cares? We got ‘em. Let’s just call the CPS and get permission to charge them both.”

Stiles pushed himself up out of the seat and heading for the door. “Can’t help but feel sorry for her though, can you?”

Derek tucked the speaker of the phone under his chin. “She stabbed to death and dismembered two innocent people and an unborn child. They were Mary and James Watkin’s only children. She’s cut off their family tree at the trunk. What’s to feel sorry for?”

Stiles leaned against the doorframe of the dim room, his eyes meeting Derek’s own fiercely glowing gaze in the dark.

“It’s him. Plenty of women are infertile, it’s life changing, but you get through it, together. They could’ve adopted, or looked into surrogacy. But instead he decided to leave her for someone who can have his biological children.” He shook his head. “Now he’s going to get less than half the sentence she will because she fell over the psychological edge and he was only the one who pushed her.”

“…I suppose. Two sides to every story and all that.”

“I’ll see you later.”

“See ya.”

“Oh and er—Nice work boss.” He winked, smirking shamelessly as the door swung closed behind him.

“Couldn’t have done it without you, boy wonder.” Derek muttered to herself as the ringing gave way to a crisp female voice.

“Hello, DCI Hale here. I’m seeking authority to charge a suspect. I need to speak with one of your solicitors, please.”

 

Sophie Jane Tullis, you are charged as follows. That on Thursday the 7th of July 2016 you did murder Dylan Watkins contrary to common law and that on Thursday the 7th of July 2016 you did murder Laura Watkins contrary to common law. Is there anything you’d like to say? Please sign your name below.

 


	12. Chapter 12

It was only five-fifteen when Derek pulled up in front of his and Erica’s flat. After charging it hadn’t taken long to get Sophie transported to Wandsworth prison to be held on remand until trial. They’d been forced to release Sam on bail, which stuck in the throat a bit, but, that was the magistrate’s decision. Everything else was paperwork. He’d spoken to Laura and Dylan’s parents that afternoon and knew already that he’d be hearing their screams in his dreams for days to come. It was every parent’s most primitive fear that they would one day have to bury their child. For Mary and James Watkins, Derek had brought that nightmare to life twice in one sentence.

He locked the car and dragged his heavy legs up the steps to the front door, slamming it shut and heading straight for his bedroom, eager to get out of his office clothes and into some old jeans and a comfortable T shirt.

It wasn’t until he was stood back at the kitchen counter, a hot mug of tea poured but untouched in front of him, that it started. His just-aging features crumpled as the tears came forth, each of them reflecting images of Laura and Dylan’s faces back across his memory, some warm, alive and smiling taken from photos of Christmas’ and birthdays they’d never celebrate again. Others were darker, colder memories infused with the stench of formalin and the fluorescent lights of the mortuary. Images of glassy eyes and blue lips.

All of a sudden, he was back in his kitchen, his heavy frame resting forward on his hands to compensate for his weak legs as he stared down at his tears splashing into his mug. There were firm hands on his shoulders, warm, living hands squeezing his tired muscles as they turned him around. Before he knew what was happening, she had tough grip on his jaw, forcing his face up to meet hers.

“Stop it!” Erica’s usually jovial tone was hard, biting out from between her clenched teeth. “I mean it, Derek. Stop crying, this isn’t you.”

Derek forced himself to take deep breaths, to bring himself back under control. He didn’t want his friend to see him like this, didn’t want to burden her with the misery of the life he’d chosen to lead.

“I’m going to tell you what you need to do, what you know that you need to do.” She told him. “Then, you’re going to bloody well do it and I’m going to stand right here to make sure you do.”

She paused, just long enough to see the confirmation of cooperation in Derek’s still swimming eyes.

“Call. Stilinski.”

With that her hands were gone, leaving Derek feeling suddenly weighed down by his own body as she stood back, folding her slender arms across her chest as she waited for him to comply.

Derek took one last deep breath and wiped his eyes before pulling his phone from his pocket and finding Stiles’ number. Erica’s eyes never left his, even for a moment.

“Stiles. It’s Derek. I was, err…I just finished work for the night and I wondered if you wanted to grab a drink or something? Just us.”

 

 

The Grapevine was an old pub, with beams and thick red patterned carpet that looked as though it had been there since the building was constructed. It was a popular haunt among the officers of the Major Incident Team, situated only two streets from their offices. It had taken a while for Stiles to warm to it, the clientele being a bit more raucous than he was used to, but, over the months that Derek had known him, he’d become just as comfortable here as any of Derek’s officers. It hadn’t taken long for the two of them to start coming here by themselves when they finished working on a case together.

When Stiles arrived, Derek was struck again by how truly handsome the younger man was, dressed in a smartly fitted suit and his hair without a strand out of place. It was one of the things that first struck people when they met Stiles, before they realized how brilliantly intelligent he was. Even on this evening, after all the hours they’d worked on this, the grimmest of cases, Stiles looked ready to step onto the cover of Vanity Fair.

Derek knew him better, though. He noticed the small dark lines under Stiles’ bright amber eyes. He noticed the slowed speed of movement and speech, not his usually hyper-energetic stream of hands and words.

Stiles took his seat opposite Derek at the small wooden table he’d chosen in the corner by the window, where he hoped their voices would be lost in the excitement of the rest of the pub’s inhabitants.

“You ok?” Derek smiled weakly over his pint, pushing the drink he’d bought for Stiles across to him. A double gin and tonic. He caught the slight smile in the corner of Stiles’ pink lips as he raised the glass to his mouth.

“Yeah. Tired. You?”

“Yeah, knackered.” Derek let his eyes stray to look out of the window at the traffic passing them by, wondering who each of them was and who they were all rushing to get home to at the end of what was, to the rest of the city, just another working day.

“One hell of a day, huh?”

He brought his tired eyes back to the man in front of him. This brilliant young man he’d allowed to occupy his thoughts almost every day since the first time he was introduced to the famous “Boy Wonder” on their very first case together all those months ago.

“One hell of a day.” He agreed.

 

 

Stiles’ bedroom spun around him as he sunk back into his body from the dreamless void of sleep. His tongue felt like sandpaper against the roof of his mouth and his stomach churned as he slammed the heel of his palm down on the alarm clock. His head pounded with the reverberating drumbeat of his pulse, echoing back and forth off the walls of his skull. Cautiously he sat himself up and swung his legs out from under the duvet into the cold air of the room so his was seated on the side of his bed and took a few deep breaths before attempting to stand. Hobbling into the bathroom he brushed his teeth, gulping greedy mouthfuls of water directly from the tap before stepping into the shower. Ten minutes later he was warm, fresh and feeling a little better. He leaned against the doorframe to his bedroom and stared at the snoring bulk of muscle and dark hair piled in the middle of his bed. He could see part of a large Celtic tattoo swirling across Derek’s broad back. Sex on their first proper date wasn’t exactly the mature, responsible attitude he’d wanted to portray but then he supposed that it was hardly their first date per-say.

He smiled, despite his headache.

He tip-toed to the wardrobe and pulled on underwear, a shirt and some trousers before retrieving a pen and notepad from the lounge. He scrawled in what in any other situation would’ve occurred to him to be typical doctor’s handwriting as he leaned on the bedside table.

 

> Had to go to work. Didn’t want to wake you. Get whatever you want from the kitchen and feel free to use the shower or whatever you need.
> 
> P.S. I had a great night so give me a call, I’d like to do it again.

 

He scoffed at himself as he wrote. Perceived shag bandits didn’t usually get second dates, but he’d try just the same. Derek seemed genuine enough last night, but then alcohol has a tendency to make you see the best in people.

They’d talked for hours about where they grew up and things they liked to do. It had transpired that they had both been keen childhood skiers, it wasn’t a sport Stiles had expected them to share. They’d even been to some of the same resorts in Europe over the years. 

Stiles had only really invited him back to his flat because by the time they’d been turned out of the pub the last train had gone and a taxi right across the city would cost a fortune. They were both too drunk to drive and Stiles’ flat was only a thirty minute walk away. He’d offered Derek the sofa bed when he offered to let him stay, but Stiles didn’t think they even switched on the lounge lights, so keen were they both to reach his bedroom as quickly as humanly possible.

He was tying his laces out in the hallway when he heard the scuffling of feet against the laminate floor.

“Sneaking off already?”

Derek stood over him in just his boxers, smiling down at Stiles’ upturned face as he stood.

“I didn’t want to wake you.” He confessed. “I wrote you a no-“

They almost bumped noses as Derek pulled him forwards to press the lengths of their bodies together in a gentle kiss.

“We have waited way too long to do this.” Derek’s eyes were fluttering open and shut, his forehead nuzzling against Stiles’ own, rubbing his rough stubble against Stiles’ smooth cheek.

“We have. So…you want to keep doing this?”

“Damn right.” Derek’s response was immediate. “We’re good together, you and me.”

“In more ways than one.” Stiles wiggled his eyebrows mischievously as Derek pulled back to give him a disapproving look. “You’re not just saying this because we’ve had a horrible case and we’re both feeling alone, are you?”

“That’s exactly why I’m saying it.” Derek’s face was serious now. “Cases like this one remind me that there’s more to life than work, even our work. No one ever really knows what tomorrow will bring and we should tell the people who matter to us how we feel about them now while we still have time.”

He pressed his lips to Stiles again, slower this time. “Let’s see just how good we can be for each other. No regrets, Dr Stilinski.”

“No regrets.” He agreed.


End file.
